Free The Empire of Necessity by Greg Grandin

announced they were opposing Howe’s “authority without reason.”
    They listed many of the captain’s specific abuses and quickly moved on to their main point: “It would be an endless, endless talk, should we attempt to enumerate all the instances of your tyranny, though of sufficient magnitude to deserve particular notice. What power is there that you could have assumed, which you have not assumed?” “If you exercise this mighty power by right,” they asked, where “did you derive this right?”
    Most of the Onico ’ssealers deliberated on every stage in planning their mutiny, taking direct votes before proceeding on any action. As in the American Revolution itself, there were limits. The crew’s one unnamed “negro” was, Moulton wrote in his journal without further comment, “excluded from the knowledge of these proceedings.”
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    The rebellion was called off before it started. Faced with the threat of having his ship seized and being placed in chains, Howe not only capitulated but “embraced substantially” the spirit of the crew’s petition. With goodwill restored, the near-mutinous men boarded the Onico , hauled anchor, and made for Más Afuera.
    They arrived on the island—which at this point was serving as the capital of what might be called the Oceanic Republic of Sealers—on October 30, finding it crowded with the gangs from at least ten ships, along with the hundred or so unattached “alone men.” Amasa Delano was there with the Perseverance , as were the Nantucket Swain brothers, captains of the Mars and the Miantonomoh . Out of New Haven was the Oneida , which had on board an “apostate Methodist priest.” Though he declared himself an atheist and spent his nights “drinking and carousing,” the minister continued to preach during the day.
    Open-minded Amasa Delano believed the doubting priest to be a “man of fine sense and liberal principles” and invited him to give a sermon on board the Perseverance . Moulton, having befriended the cleric, suggested he take 2 Corinthians 4 as his text:
We faint not. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.… We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
    Good republicans like Moulton interpreted the verse as supporting natural, inherent rights: the fact that every man had his own God-given conscience shining in his heart—the “light of nature,” as Delano put it elsewhere—meant that sovereignty, reason, morality, and justice were vested in individuals and didn’t spring from “fountain head” despots like George Howe.
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    Once at Más Afuera, Howe didn’t return to his old generalized arbitrariness but rather concentrated his bile on Moulton, threatening to leave him stranded on the mainland, where the Spaniards would take him prisoner and put him to work “in the mines.” Moulton responded by composing another declaration, this time directed not to Howe but to all the “American Masters” at Más Afuera, including Amasa Delano, who were acting like the informal island colony’s ad hoc governing council. Once again, Moulton recounted Howe’s many insults, concluding his defense by asking to be released from all his obligations to Howe and the Onico ’s owners.
    The council of captains convened a hearing on March 15, 1801, hosted by Valentine Swain, master of the schooner Miantonomoh . Around a head table in the captain’s quarters sat Delano, the Swain brothers, and four other seal shipmasters, who conducted the inquiry with decorum and solemnity. They